Original link: http://www.ruanyifeng.com/blog/2022/07/weekly-issue-213.html
Here is a record of weekly tech content worth sharing, published on Friday.
This magazine is open source (GitHub: ruanyf/weekly ), welcome to submit issues, contributions or recommend scientific and technological content.
Weekly discussion forum post “Who’s Hiring? “ , provides a lot of programmer employment information, welcome to visit or post job/internship positions.
cover picture
On June 22, at the World Swimming Championships, an American athlete suddenly fainted during the competition and sank to the bottom of the pool. Seeing that something was wrong, her coach jumped into the water and rescued her. ( via )
Topic of the Week: Knowledge Silos, Knowledge Software
(one)
Stack Overflow , the world’s largest question and answer site, holds an annual survey of programmers around the world, and the results for 2022 have come out.
Added a question this year:
“What factors affect your productivity? Do they happen frequently? How much time does it take you?”
Guess what the answer is.
(two)
68% of programmers say that the biggest impact on productivity is not being able to find answers . When there is a problem, there is no one to ask, or there is no documentation, and the work is stuck and can’t go on.
The more senior the programmer, the higher the percentage giving this answer. That is to say, high-level people are more difficult to find answers, because they are all atypical problems, and few people have mentioned them.
Programmers spend an average of 30 minutes a day looking for answers, and 25% spend more than an hour (above). This is a huge loss for both the individual and the company.
There is a special term to describe this phenomenon, called “knowledge silos” , which means that information cannot be effectively integrated, just like “islands” in the sea.
Knowledge must exist somewhere, but you don’t know where that place is or how to get there. Such is the misery of the knowledge age: too much knowledge is immobile, difficult to understand, difficult to acquire, and difficult to disseminate.
(three)
In order to solve “knowledge silos”, a new type of software has emerged in recent years, called “knowledge software”, which is specially used to organize and disseminate knowledge.
I have always felt that knowledge software has great prospects and is worth doing, and the market is very large. The more complex knowledge we face, the more powerful knowledge tools are needed. It is also the direction encouraged by the state. To become a knowledge power, it must need the support of tools.
The results of this survey have further strengthened my idea. If there was a way to reduce the time everyone spends finding answers from 30 minutes a day to 25 minutes a day, what a benefit!
Regardless of the form of knowledge software, I think it should at least have the following characteristics.
- record . It can record knowledge, so that knowledge is no longer a one-time exchange.
- Tidy up . It provides a knowledge portal and categorizes knowledge clearly, MDN and Arch Wiki are good examples.
- flow . It makes knowledge easy to flow, easily transferable from one person to another, and easy to aggregate with other knowledge.
I would like to mention the last point in particular, the fluidity of knowledge, which necessarily requires the expression of knowledge to be easy to understand and even interesting.
Because knowledge is actually a burden, the more complex the knowledge, the greater the pressure on people’s physiology and psychology, and the greater the “entropy reduction” efforts that learners are required to make. Good knowledge software can reduce the burden of knowledge.
Zhihu has this question, which encourages complex answers. Things that can be clearly explained in a sentence or two, but its preferred answer is often a long-winded argument. After reading it, you will feel that the problem is more complicated and the entropy is greater.
Good knowledge software should balance principles and details. Principles are simple and details are complex. Try to make it easy for novices to understand, generate interest, and old birds can refer to and solve problems.
Activity
1. You Yuxi’s speech “Front-end Trends 2022”
You Yuxi, the author of the front-end framework Vue.js and the construction tool Vite, will give a speech “Front-end Trends 2022” at the “Second Rare Earth Developers Conference” on July 22, talking about his current front-end development. Views, including (1) the paradigm of the framework, (2) the development of the tool chain, (3) the trend of JS full stack, etc.
Scan the QR code of the poster below to register for free, participate in the live speech, and other activities of the conference.
After the registration is successful, don’t forget to draw a lottery to win prizes such as AirPods Pro and Huawei Watch.
Technology trends
The Coca-Cola Company modified the cap design in the UK, attaching the cap to the bottle so that the two could not be separated.
This is for recycling, and when bottles were recycled in the past, caps were often not available. In order to ensure that the plastic bottle cap does not cause environmental problems, it cannot be separated from the bottle body.
Last year’s popular sci-fi movie “Dune” tells a story that takes place on a desert planet. In order to convey the feeling of an endless sea of sand, the soundtrack of the film was not completed in the studio, but was recorded in the Death Valley desert in California, USA.
In the movie, when the protagonist sets foot on the desert planet for the first time, because the local sand contains “spice”, the sound engineer wants to find a sound that makes the audience feel that there is something special in the desert under their feet. The way they came up with it was to spread the crispy rice crackers over the desert and give the sand a subtle, alluring crunch.
A total of 3,200 sound effects were recorded throughout the film, many produced by burying microphones in the sand or hitting the sand with a wooden hammer.
3. Breathalyzer
About 43,000 people will die in traffic accidents in the United States in 2021, the highest rate in a decade and a half. To reduce the number of deaths, the United States plans to legislate to make all new cars sold must have breathalyzers.
A breathalyzer is used to test the alcohol content of the breath and is attached to the engine ignition. The driver must blow air into the tube before driving, and the engine will only start if the alcohol content is below the limit. Currently, nearly 350,000 vehicles in the United States have the device installed.
Garmin has launched a bicycle rearview mirror, which is similar to a thumb camera and has three functions of “camera + radar + tail light”.
Put it on the back of the seat cushion, and you can display a real-time rear view of the car on your mobile phone. What’s more, its radar will automatically detect approaching vehicles within 140 meters behind and give reminders. There is no need to look back when riding, as long as there is a vehicle approaching behind, you will get an alarm.
Last month, the U.S. city of San Francisco became the first major city in the world to allow driverless taxis on the road. From 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. every day, these taxis can transport passengers without a driver.
But not long after hitting the road, on the night of June 29, at least 12 of Cruise’s unmanned taxis suddenly stopped at an intersection for unknown reasons. The cars just stopped at the intersection, motionless, blocking traffic for hours. Cruise ended up having to send human drivers and drive them to the parking lot.
This accident shows that the introduction of driverless vehicles into existing urban traffic is a complex matter, with all kinds of unexpected problems. It may be a better way to first plan for a “dedicated road for driverless vehicles”.
article
1. Ren Zhengfei: About the Expert Committee (Chinese)
Huawei recently established an expert committee, which is an event platform for more than 6,000 chief experts, scientists, and hundreds of thousands of engineers. It organizes activities, coffee, and tea parties to exchange ideas.
Here is an internal conversation of Ren Zhengfei on June 1 this year. He had a discussion with members of the secretariat of the Expert Committee, answered everyone’s questions, and explained why the Expert Committee was established.
I really like a sentence in it: “To eradicate all those who block our opening, we must absorb the energy of others to improve ourselves.”
2. Tracking the Migration of Beijing Swifts (Chinese)
Every April, a group of swifts will come to the Summer Palace in Beijing and leave in July. In order to find out their routes and whereabouts, researchers installed locators for them, and confirmed that after they left Beijing, they would pass through Xinjiang, Central Asia, the Middle East, and finally reach southern Africa.
3. Develop a Web/Hybird project based on zero basis (Chinese)
The author has developed a complete Web/Hybird project based on zero basis, supporting browser side, Android side, and iOS side. This long article records all the learning and development process. (Contributed by @imfms )
4. Oxygen Candle (English)
Candle burning consumes oxygen. This article introduces a special candle that releases a lot of oxygen when it burns for emergency oxygen supply.
5. JavaScript Containers (English)
An article by Ryan Dahl, founder of Node.js and Deno, proposes JavaScript as the standard language for containers and Deno as the internal running environment of the container.
In this way, the container can be standardized, and the developer does not need to build the image file of the container, and can directly throw the JS script into the standardized container.
6. How to choose a computer master’s school in the United States (English)
The author is an American who wants to do a master’s degree in computer science. This article records his screening process for schools, which may be useful to students with similar needs.
7. The self-hosted application I use (English)
The author introduces all the applications hosted on his home intranet, which can be used as a reference for setting up home SaaS services.
8. How to do web scraping via JS runtime snapshot (English)
The data of many web pages is generated by JS, which is especially inconvenient for web crawling at this time. The author has thought of a very good method, which is to generate a memory snapshot for the JS runtime, and then extract the web page data from the snapshot.
tool
1. KOReader
E-book reading software for Kindle, Android and Linux, supporting a variety of common e-book formats.
2. Pointless
An open source web drawing board that can be used as a whiteboard with good results.
3. PyScript
PyScript is a Python interpreter for web pages, capable of running Python code on web pages.
4. MacCopier
This MacOS tool can extract the verification code in the SMS and automatically copy it to the clipboard, refer to this tutorial . Text messages need to be forwarded to the desktop computer on the iPhone. (Contributed by @DreamSaddle )
5. doctree
This software can parse code in any language, extract grammatical units such as functions and classes, and generate a searchable API documentation website.
6. htmx
A web JS library that allows any web element to make an HTTP request and update the element locally, see this tutorial for details.
7. USWDS
The US government’s web design system, which provides many components for use by the government system’s websites.
8. Jbake
A static site generator for Java, with cross-platform binary executables.
A code base visualization tool officially launched by GitHub. It generates SVG files through GitHub Actions, representing the entire code base. The hollow circle represents the directory, the solid circle represents the file, and the size of the circle represents the size of the file. It can also generate dynamic changes according to the submission history. picture.
resource
1. Principle of mechanical watch
A long article in English, using beautifully crafted interactive pictures, to introduce the principles of mechanical watches and why springs and gears can be used to time time.
2. Google Software Engineering (Chinese version)
The author did it himself, and translated the book “Software Engineering at Google” in both Chinese and English. The original book is a collection of articles by Google employees about software engineering practices within Google. (Contributed by @zhang14725804 )
3. Tauri series: create your own next-generation cross-terminal applications
A series of articles in Chinese, introducing how to develop a cross-platform desktop application with Tauri. Tauri is an alternative to Electron and uses the platform’s own WebView. (Contributed by @lencx )
A Vue.js question bank, you can choose different levels of difficulty for different levels of practice. (Contributed by @webfansplz )
5. Learning Synths
A tutorial on voice synthesis, through a small example, to introduce the principle of voice synthesizer, there is a Chinese version.
picture
In 2009, an American engineer saw that when people moved graves, it was very troublesome to dig out coffins from the cemetery, so he invented a screw-type coffin and applied for a patent.
This coffin can be screwed into the ground like a screw. When it needs to be relocated, it can be screwed out by mechanical reverse. Using this coffin, burial can be automated.
More and more people are using elongated displays with fish screens. Its advantage is that multiple windows can be placed at the same time.
However, when viewing web pages and writing code, you will feel that the height of the display is not enough, so some people will put the display upright.
As a result, watching videos and playing games is annoying again.
Is there a monitor placement that has the best of both worlds?
Linux systems allow the monitor to be tilted at any angle. If you tilt the monitor 22 degrees, the diagonal of a 21:9 monitor will be horizontal.
This results in the maximum horizontal line length and the maximum number of windows the monitor can fit. At the same time, the vertical display height of the window is also higher than when the monitor is placed horizontally.
abstract
1. Massive papers do not contribute to scientific progress
Does more papers in a field mean faster scientific progress in that field?
No, it’s not like that.
Every year, a large number of papers are published. The reason behind it is not that there are so many scientific discoveries, but that a large number of institutions use the number of papers as an indicator to measure the work performance and output of scientists and decide how much funding to give. Scientists also see publication as a career achievement.
However, the increase in the number of papers and the progress of science are actually two problems, and there is not necessarily a transformational relationship between the two.
A study found that when too many papers are published in a field each year, it actually leads to stagnation rather than progress in the field.
Because a large number of new papers may cause reviewers and readers to become fatigued, unable to recognize new ideas and new discoveries with breakthrough value. Moreover, the different perspectives presented by various papers may prevent the academic community from gradually focusing on a truly valuable new idea.
The larger the number of papers, the more citations will be concentrated on a few widely read papers, and the new papers are less likely to be heavily cited, and will only be submerged in the mass of papers.
At this time, even if a new paper is noticed, it is not through a gradual and cumulative process, but through other factors, such as recommendations from celebrities.
These factors all suggest that the sheer volume of papers is likely to slow progress in large scientific fields, trapping researchers in existing canonical discourses.
speech
1,
A common tactic of persuading others is to not argue that something is false, just show that it is related to someone of low status; and vice versa, don’t argue that something is true, just show that it is related to someone of high status .
— The Paradox of Persuasion and Prestige
2,
I predict that artificial intelligence will reach the level of human intelligence in 2029, and artificial intelligence will be a billion times stronger than human intelligence in 2045, reaching self-evolution.
— Ray Kurzweil , Predictions for 2017, Director of Engineering at Google
3.
In the 1970s, the British state-owned telecommunications company BT carried out optical fiber research and established the world’s first optical fiber wide area network. In 1990, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decided not to promote this technology because BT was too far ahead of other companies. Once the technology was promoted, it would cause a large number of companies to close down or withdraw from the UK market.
The result is that the UK’s broadband internet speeds have languished since then and are now lagging behind other countries.
— “How Margaret Thatcher killed UK high-speed broadband before it came along”
4.
In 1960, the average American household purchased less than 25 pieces of clothing a year; in 2020, it will buy nearly 70 pieces of clothing a year. If everyone on earth lived like Americans, it would take five earth’s resources to meet demand.
— “Overconsumption is killing the planet”
5.
Everyone is born from a mix of the genes of their parents, which creates genetic mutations, where favorable mutations ultimately give rise to a survival advantage.
In the same way, as a programmer, you should try new things and new skills more, mix with old knowledge and old skills, so as to gain a survival advantage.
— “Why programmers are stagnant”
this week in history
2021 (Issue 165): The era of full-service apps
2020 (Issue 114): USB stick survival and Uber-job
2019 (Issue 63): Concentration Trends in the Internet Market
2018 (Issue 12): Ageing population, insufficient pensions
thanks
The domestic software FlowUs provides column services for the weekly magazine (scan code can also be viewed). FlowUs is a collection of “document + table + network disk”, which can be used for knowledge base, data processing, and file storage.
(Finish)
document information
- Copyright statement: Free to reprint – non-commercial – non-derivative – keep attribution ( Creative Commons 3.0 license )
- Date of publication: July 8, 2022
This article is reprinted from: http://www.ruanyifeng.com/blog/2022/07/weekly-issue-213.html
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.